2025, Family, History, Uncategorized, work

They Don’t Make That Model Anymore

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Our last day of working for the State will be sometime the first week of October. The administrators at both of our agencies are scrambling to figure out who can do all the things we do, and it is turning out to be a challenge.

Husband and I are somewhat unique in that we are actually in-person at our agencies and don’t work remotely. Most of our State psychology colleagues live out of state and only test people via telehealth with the help of psychometrists. Very few of them even test children. We also are unique in that we know how to give IQ tests to children about to turn 3, and that is a rare skill indeed. Children with developmental disabilities need IQ testing before the age of 3 to determine if their issues are severe enough and will be long term. If so, they qualify for a host of services, as well as Medicaid and excellent case management. In other more populous parts of the state, there are enough psychologists in the private sector to do the testing. Not so out here.

We also know how to do IQ testing using the Stanford Binet IQ test, which has norms down to age 2, and which none of the younger State or private sector psychologists know how to use. You can’t test a 2 year old via telehealth. They don’t make them like us anymore.

Husband says he wants to be like a 1964 Chevy Impala. You can see it in the header photo. I identify with my Great Grandmother’s early 1920’s Reo. My father had vivid memories of playing in the car when he was small. Here is a similar model

What out of production car model do you miss? What else have they stopped making that you regret?

43 thoughts on “They Don’t Make That Model Anymore”

  2. I was enamored with the Triumph TR-7 ( if I recall correctly). It was extremely popular for a few years back in the 1980s, I think. Famous for its wedge-shaped design. Never bought one, maybe rode in one once. But I’ve never been anything close to a car nut. Give me the highest quality transportation at the lowest possible price (value, please!) and I’m happy. And we’ve owned most of our cars for 15-20 years, so we don’t flit from one fad car to the next.

    Lands’ End used to make the best turtlenecks and flannel shirts. Now the turtlenecks are crap and the flannel shirts a shadow of their former selves. Talk about lasting for 20 years. The OLD clothes did! Nowadays, 5-10 years tops if you’re careful.

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    1. I agree wholeheartedly about the LE turtlenecks. I used to have a bunch and loved them. I had to replace a couple of them and discovered the quality has gone way downhill.

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    2. My take was that Sears bought Land’s End to lift their brand and give it some cache, but the association had the opposite effect and dragged LE down.

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      2. The only thing that maintains and assures quality in a product is a corporate culture that values it. Left to the bean counters, in the interest of ever-increasing profit, they will allow quality to degrade as far as they think their consumer is able to tell the difference.

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    4. A friend of ours in Winnipeg had a TR-7. One day she came down to the parking garage of her apartment complex and found someone had carefully removed and stolen the driver’s side door.

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  3. I don’t have any nostalgic or romantic association with any of my previous cars. Cars from the 60s, if you were very lucky, had a lifespan of no more than 100,000 miles. By that metric my current car would be scrap by now.
    Not that I would be in the market for one anymore, but I regret that small pickup trucks seem to have become extinct. My previous two vehicles were small Toyota pickups. If I wanted to replace them with a third, it would have to be an older model because all the newer ones are unacceptably large.Not only are the newer pickups one sees on the road oversized, but most of them look as if they’ve never been used to haul anything, certainly not gravel or composted manure. They’re also inexplicably expensive.

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  4. We had a Chevy just like the one pictured, but our was yellow. I was rarely allowed to drive it at first; they had bought a 1950 Plymouth as a second car, the Tan Bomb.

    I identify most, though, with my bright yellow 1972 VW Bug, and then later the VW pop-top-camper that we had between maybe 1986 and ’94. They’ve started making some kind of VW Van again: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a60719528/new-volkswagen-california-revealed/

    Thinking…

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  5. My first car was a 1974 Plymouth Duster that my dad bought from my brother-in-law. It was metallic blue with white striping on the sides and rear deck and a white canopy roof. Pretty snazzy! Unfortunately it had vinyl seats and no air conditioning which made summer driving kinda miserable.

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    1. We were talking about that the other day, how none of our cars had AC when we were kids. On the highway with the windows open and you couldn’t talk and everything inside blew around.
      I rode on the ledge in the back window too!

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  6. I am not even remotely a car person. Although when my current Honda Insight gives up its ghost, I will be sad as they have discontinued it. When I was in high school I really loved chowing around in my mom’s VW convertible bug. I don’t know if they make those anymore either. And I used to have a rule about renting a convertible whenever I went to Hawaii so I suppose if I were to be associated with any car, it should probably be a convertible.

    Lots of things that have been discontinued bother me. I’m still sad about the Ralston hot cereal.

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  7. OT. I finished the Three Musketeers series last night. Today I thought I’d go checking to see what else is out there and I have found a 1993 version with Charlie Sheen and Kiefer Sutherland that they are playing for laughs.

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    2. The 1973 version has quite a bit of humor in it. The ensemble cast includes Michael York, Richard Chamberlain and Raquel Welsh. It’s actually quite good.

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      1. I couldn’t get through the Mickey Mouse and Goofy and Donald Duck Three Musketeers with music. I think I’ll lay off three musketeers for a while now

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  8. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    All I care about is that my car is reliable, warm and exuding an air of “I’ve got the road.” I am not sentimental about the old ones.

    But Lands End Turtlenecks. That one matters. I still have some of the golden old ones.

    OT: When I retired I was going to start sorting old belongings in our house, because since we moved here 28 years ago we have never really done that. Then last year, Lou was having his medical crisis which required my time, attention, and energy until he was stable enough to live at home. So the sorting was delayed. Then my medical stuff needed attention. More delay. So the sorting is happening now. My little project of the day (I just do a tiny bit every day) was a corner of the garage which I just successfully sorted. Lou is still out there with his PCA (Personal Care Attendant), Jimmy who is helping him sort tools, and his dad’s tools, and his grandpa’s tools. Talk about stuff that never wore out! There is one rounded screwdriver post with the wooden handle held together with hose clamp.

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    1. Among my various volunteer gigs as an old guy is the neighborhood Toolshare operation. We’ve got a lot of stuff that people can borrow. (If they live in the defined neighborhood, for $5 per year. If they live elsewhere, like Y’all, it’s $25 per year). Besides sharing tools, we gather tools when people downsize. I say, “first to your offspring, friends and neighbors, we’ll take what’s left.” A couple times a year now, I set up a table at a community event, like the Juneteenth fair, the PRIDE festival, or National Night Out, and give away free tools. It is so much fun.
      If your own neighborhood doesn’t yet have this kind of thing, I recommend it to you.

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  9. 73 jaguar xke convertable 66 vw 9 window van 59 cadalac,63 porshe 356 bathtub
    levi’s 501s, real peanut butter, i had a particular shoe i loved it disappeared and i was able to find it on ebay for maybe another 10 years, gone from ebay for 10 years now
    hats by stetson resistol and borsalino before mercury wasoutlawed in theearly 60’s

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  12. I have an old microwave that has a mechanical timer, so you twist a dial instead of punching buttons. I love that mechanical timer. When the time is up, it says “Ding!” Modern microwaves say “Beep beep beep beep”. And mine has no clock that has to be reset anytime there’s a power failure or a change in daylight savings time.

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  13. Miss my 1963 Ford Falcon convertible but did sell it to a friend who fixed it up in California after driving it there, stopping in. Colorado where his wife’s mother lived and I had spent many years myself. I thank him for saving it!

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